Fighting Joe

Adams, William Taylor. [As Oliver Optic] Fighting Joe; or, the Fortunes of a Staff Officer. A Story of the Great Rebellion. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1866. Out of print.

Tom Somers, of The Soldier Boy and The Youg Lieutenant, participates in the campaign leading up to the battle of Antietam. Key incidents in this somewhat unfocussed novel involve a mysterious Major Riggleston, who keeps shifting allegiances and does not seem to recall the events of one episode in the next. In the retinue of Joe Hooker, the fighting general of the title, Somers and his friend de Banyan fight in the Chattanooga campaign and eventually escape from a South Carolina prison camp, before the inevitable happy ending that reunites Tom with his lucky-sock-knitting sweetheart Lilian Ashford.